


Epiphany

by GhostoftheMotif



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Backstory, F/M, M/M, Spoilers, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-09
Updated: 2011-10-09
Packaged: 2017-10-24 11:07:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/262776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostoftheMotif/pseuds/GhostoftheMotif
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a common memory for them to become mired in. The short, thirty-seven second loop, was one they all shared, a recollection that been pressed into all of them with a heavy hand. [Spoilers for various things post Reconstruction episode 16]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Epiphany

It was a common memory for them to become mired in. The short, thirty-seven second loop, was one they all shared, a recollection that been pressed into all of them with a heavy hand. There was nothing overtly dramatic about the scene itself, but a dull, purposeful thrum settled in their chests at the precise moment when the commonplace view became impossibly meaningful. The feeling was unpleasant and constrictive, and yet it set them alive with intent and resolve in the same stroke. It was the start, the first piece of grain to hit a scale.  
   
Dr. Leonard Church, the director of a program that hadn’t quite yet found its niche in the war, was crossing the street. His face was younger than it had been the few times Delta had seen it following his creation, less guarded. There was some grey in his slicked-back hair, coming in at the temples, but the not-quite-permanent lines in his face and the not-quite-quashed warmth in his eyes denoted the coloring as pre-mature. His hands were shoved deep in the pockets of his gunmetal-grey suit, the suit jacket off and slung over his shoulder. Even though Delta couldn’t remember the details, he knew that the man had just left a budgetary meeting and that the way his tie had been loosened around his neck was a brand of preemptive nervous habit to soothe the urge to strangle his business associates. There was a sort of unapologetic, lazy pride evident in his method of moving, though that may have only been because Delta knew to look for it.  
   
A little over two feet away from the center of the crosswalk, it happened: Dr. Leonard Church brought up a hand to push a piece of black hair back into place and lifted his eyes from the asphalt as he did so.  
   
Delta was standing on the sidewalk that the Director was approaching and knew without turning around what it was the man had seen. High above him, a banner was hanging from the sixth story of building. It was an advertisement for a get-together hosted by the local university, done in bright colors sure to catch the attention of anyone who glanced in its direction. The university’s name was in the center, and around its edges were the Greek symbols denoting the fraternities and sororities that would be hosting the event.  
   
One university, many functioning organizations.  
   
Leonard froze mid-step, and Delta felt the thrum of epiphany stretch and raise its head inside his chest.  
   
In reality, Dr. Leonard Church had continued across the street after only a brief pause, his eyes widening slightly as his mind chased the thought around his head like a fox set on a rabbit: one into many, one into many.  
   
But in this malleable duplicate of the event, Omega came in from the side, picked up a piece of glass left over from an earlier wreck, and without change in pace, stabbed the shard into the man’s stomach so far and with such slow strength that it disappeared beneath torn fabric, blood, and skin.  
   
Omega pressed his palm flat against where it had gone in and met the look of uncomprehending shock on their future creator’s face. There was no recognition in Leonard’s expression as Omega twisted his hand in the man’s cobalt silk tie and eased him to the ground, all with a sharp grin full of teeth and bright with contempt. Delta had seen Omega impersonally torture, kill, and savor the process despite the way the Omega also maintained the disconnect of superiority over his victims.  
   
Nothing was impersonal about the way he went about killing the younger, lauded, confused Director.  
   
The traffic had started moving again, and it blocked the two men from Delta’s view at uneven intervals, cars moving past as though the drivers were blind. The glimpses Delta did catch were of Omega leaning over Leonard’s body, one hand cradling his skull, face bent low to speak directly into his ear as his other hand disappeared into the dip beneath his ribs, the punctured skin puckering around the bones of his wrist. Formally white shirt mangled and torn from his chest, lying on asphalt slick with his own gore, the Director simply stared into the AI’s eyes, fingers tangled loosely in the hem of Omega’s shirt as he tried to hold on to something, _anything_.  
   
Then the thirty-seven second loop drew to a close, and abruptly Omega was kneeling alone, his hand no longer buried inside a chest cavity but splayed on a now completely clean street.  
   
From the opposite sidewalk, Dr. Leonard Church rounded a corner and began the cycle again.  
   
This time, Omega waited for him in the middle of the road, unnoticed by passing pedestrians, drivers, or by the object of his attention. He simply stood there in the midst of a catalogued memory, his crooked smile and half-mad eyes focused on the man who kept drawing closer. One hand was hooked in the pocket of his jeans, the other hanging casually at his side, fingers twitching almost imperceptibly. He’d raise that hand, dig his nails into the Director’s throat, and---  
   
Delta moved to stand behind him before he had the chance. He rested a hand lightly on Omega’s shoulder and spoke before Omega’s reflexes had time to react in a way that would be detrimental to Delta’s health. “It’s futile,” he said calmly. “Nothing can be accomplished from it.”  
   
Omega didn’t turn to face him. When he replied, it was with little other than annoyed impatience. “I enjoy it. Go spread your logic to our engineered masses and our vegetable of a host, and leave me to my pointless, gratifying murder.”  
   
“Alpha and the Director are not the same man.” They’d lived very different lives.  
   
Dr. Leonard Church drew even with them and faltered, and they felt his gaze fix on the banner.  
   
Omega’s shoulders stiffened. Delta’s eyes fell closed as he exhaled.  
   
There was a moment of pressure, and then the man continued past without ever glancing in their direction.  
   
“I know they aren’t the same man.” Omega’s voice was low with barely restrained enmity; he was saving it for the next repetition. “I’m not a fool.”  
   
“Then, why---”  
   
“Because I _enjoy_ it,” he reiterated in a growl, finally rounding on him. He still had that same grin. “There’s no greater reasoning behind it, _Dee_.” Omega drew out the name with a sneer and somehow blended a few twists of a New Yorker accent just for the virtue of pain into the last half of the sentence. “Rage and bloodlust aren’t rational. And as long as we’re talking about futile endeavors, I may as well point out your hopeless drive to understand either.”  
   
Delta met his eyes without flinching, without change in expression. To those who didn’t know him, he would have appeared mildly curious. To those who did, he would have seemed coldly calculating. “I understand anger perfectly well, O’Malley. I merely lack your---” he considered past battles, past corpses, past chaos, “---creativity and revelry in the matter.”  
   
“Then why are you watching?” Omega stepped a little closer, head tilted at an arrogant angle, smile still splitting his face like a wound. “I might be able to teach you something if you’d step in off the sidelines.” It was a taunt, not an offer.  
   
Delta did not react to the decrease in distance. “I engage in very few pointless activities. This will not be one of them.”  
   
The Director’s epiphany pulsed again.  
   
Omega, lightening quick, reached out a hand to clench around the man’s jugular before he could pass. Without looking away from Delta’s eyes, he squeezed, and Dr. Leonard Church made a sound of pain. “Then don’t interrupt or get out.”  
   
Delta left, the sound of Omega’s voice fading behind him, stabbing words of fear into a man who had no idea what he’d one day create.  
   
\---  
   
It was dark. There was every possibility that the lack of light had nothing to do with the actual time and everything to do with the fact Delta couldn’t remember the evening with perfect clarity, prompting shadows to fall and blot out the imperfections. The night sky stretched vast and distant above him, and the stars and faraway glow of a barn light were the only sources of illumination. Some disquieted portion of his mind thought that maybe there was supposed to be a barely visible skyline and perhaps a small fire tucked away on a hill above him, but he wasn’t certain, and so they were absent.  
   
Leonard Church wasn’t a doctor yet, and the woman in his arms had yet to become a soldier. When they did fall onto those paths, there would be tumultuous changes in their bearings, but the current note of their laughs and joking tones spoke volumes to the time they still had left.  
   
“If you’re so big on actions having a purpose, pray tell, what’s the point of watching this?”  
   
Delta’s stare remained on the two specters of the past as he leaned on the remains of a dilapidated wooden fence. “She said something here… something we should have remembered…”  
   
Omega came to a stop beside him, attention locking onto the subject of the memory, albeit without the wild fury of those hours spent on the same section of street. He was silent for several minutes, watching as Leonard Church, in the comfortable stage of his twenty-somethings where he’d started to grow into himself, got pelted with a rock for something he’d said, laughing and holding his arms up in a shield before Allison leaned forward to pull them away from his face and kiss him.  
   
The start of a very different kind of epiphany began to stir in Delta’s chest, giddy, hopeful, vulnerable, and young.  
   
“It was some tripe about trapping someone you love in a definition.” Omega’s voice was deadly even, only holding a slight lilt of his usual barbed mockery. “She used to say the same phrase when I knew her. Her shadow, at least.” Bitterness crept into his tone and straddled a brink that could easily collapse into violence. “She told him that everything he knew about her was nothing compared to what she knew about herself.”  
   
Delta’s head bowed slightly even though his eyes never left the couple. One day that twenty-something year old would become the Director, and his mind would remake Allison based off his narrow interpretation, and any chance she may have had to correct it would be restricted. They’d all be restricted.  
   
“It’s fucking pointless to watch this. She’s gonna die, he’s gonna mourn, his employees will see him go insane and not do anything about it, and then one _happy_ day, our lot will be created. What’s there to learn? Fucking pointless…”  
   
Delta didn’t answer. He knew what was coming.  
   
Church tried to stand up straight, almost fell, played it off as a sort of half-turn, lifted an arm, and spun Allison in an impromptu dance that made her roll her eyes and berate him for a cliché. Just to be contrary, he dipped her low to the ground, and she laughed again, and the only light he could see reflected over her skin was starlight, and---  
   
And the stark realization that he was in love struck him with the force of a battering ram to a hollow husk of an astonished heart.  
   
The comprehension ricocheted inside their bodies, pulled at loose threads in their chests, and unraveled them until it became a crystallized need, a want.  
   
It became, as they knew it would, a compulsion.  
   
Omega, a creature of impulse, followed the sudden internal demand, hand clasping behind Delta’s skull to yank him forward into a kiss. Delta, a creature of reason, simply followed the strain of thought to its logical conclusion. It was something neither of them had been given much of an opportunity to experience, an emotion they were all but incapable of feeling, and yet in that moment, it was very real. Delta felt like a livewire had twisted around his spine, felt like Omega’s hands were anchoring him to something important, felt like if he could use his mouth half as well as Omega could that it might last longer than the eight-and-six-tenths seconds that the epiphany would, felt like it didn’t matter that in a fraction of a moment Omega might feel more inclined to break his neck. He _felt_.  
   
And then the emotion fractured into continuously smaller pieces until the sensation was sequestered safely in the realm of common knowledge and no longer the same startling, overwhelming force.  
   
The hand that Omega had fisted in the front of Delta’s shirt to pull him closer suddenly became the main proponent of shoving him away.  
   
Delta caught himself on the fence, looking up into dark eyes with blank composure that didn’t go all the way through.  
   
They’d been standing too close to be completely separated, and their legs were still tangled together even though Delta had been forced to fall backwards and Omega stood straight and rigid.  
   
Finally, after an assessing silence that spanned several breaths attempting to ground rising and falling chests in the security of the present, Omega slipped seamlessly into his impeccable sneer. “So, there is some emotion in you.”  
   
Delta stared up at him, and said, as if the words were the easiest in the world, in perfect time with the woman standing with her hands cupped between those of the man she loved somewhere in the field beyond, “What you know about me is nothing compared to what I know about myself.”  
   
Omega’s expression only fluctuated in his eyes, almost imperceptible, but only almost.  
   
Smoothing his shirt with feigned calm, Delta straightened and brushed passed the other AI. “And as long as we’re on the subject of pointless endeavors, I may as well point out your hopeless drive to understand either.”  
   
For a moment, Delta thought Omega was going to strike him from behind as he walked away.  
   
He didn’t.


End file.
